How Lenovo Builds Responsible AI Under Doug Fisher’s Lead

Lenovo promotes ethical AI, emphasising inclusion, transparency and environmental concerns as part of its six key pillars.

Its Responsible AI Council assures that AI-enhanced offerings comply with ethical, legal and societal norms.

It fosters innovation through initiatives that enhance human health and sustainability, such as Alzheimer’s Intelligence and carbon emissions assessment tools.

By integrating governance and accountability in its AI strategy, Lenovo aims to develop smarter technology for both people and the environment.

Its Senior Vice President and Chief Security and AI Officer, Doug Fisher, shares more in this Q&A.

Please introduce yourself and your role.

I’m Doug Fisher, Senior Vice President and Chief Security and AI Officer at Lenovo, and I lead security across Lenovo. 

It’s my responsibility to ensure the integrity of Lenovo’s products, solutions and services, global supply chain and data protection. 

In 2024, my role was expanded to lead Lenovo’s AI governance, championing its AI policy alongside Lenovo’s Responsible AI Council.

I joined Lenovo back in 2018, initially serving as Chief Operating Officer of Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group and before that, I spent more than 20 years at Intel, where I led its Software Solutions Group.

What is Lenovo’s Responsible AI Council?

Lenovo’s Responsible AI Council is a cross-functional governance body that evaluates AI applications that may present ethical, legal or liability risks to address a wide array of challenges in the AI space.

Increasingly, organisations are recognising the value of mitigating AI risks. 

Between lawsuits over copyrighted training data, reports of data leakage, privacy violations and criminal instructions, customers are growing sceptical of the technology.

However, we recognise the push for responsible AI cannot come from the top down; it must be built from the bottom up, building a culture focused on the responsible rollout of AI-enabled products, solutions and services with the oversight of the Responsible AI council to ensure everything we do with AI is legal, fair, transparent and explainable to our customers.

What are the key pillars of responsibility at Lenovo and how do they support Lenovo’s technology and sustainability strategies?

At Lenovo, we believe that technology should be built with both people and the planet in mind. 

That’s why we’ve committed to Smarter AI for All through six core pillars:

• Inclusion
• Privacy and security
• Accountability and reliability
• Explainability
• Transparency
• Environmental and social impact. 

These guide everything we do, helping ensure our approach to AI and technology is not only smart, but also responsible and inclusive.

I’m particularly proud of two recent projects, both of which were launched at Lenovo’s flagship event Tech World last year. 

Our first-of-its-kind ‘Alzheimer’s Intelligence’ initiative uses custom AI to aggregate first-hand experience from people living with dementia and Alzheimer’s into a photorealistic 3D avatar capable of having a natural conversation and offering accurate and compassionate advice to those recently diagnosed. 

We also collaborated with long-term partner The Scott Morgan Foundation (SMF) to announce an AI-powered communication solution for people with ALS, which is now in active testing with SMF’s community and leading clinicians.

AI’s transformative impact is not limited to human and social impact issues. 

It also stands to revolutionise our ability to measure and better manage our impact on the planet. 

We harnessed the power of generative AI through the Lenovo Intelligent Sustainability Solutions Advisor (LISSA) solution to estimate emissions across the IT lifecycle. 

In October, we proudly shared the Lenovo ESG Navigator solution, a tool that helps monitor key ESG metrics at our customers’ factory sites and delivers near-real-time insights on GHG emissions and energy use.

While we embed sustainability and AI in our services-led transformation, we are also innovating to improve energy efficiency for computing with the next era of Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling technology. 

The latest generation reshapes our traditional water cooling and data centre design with 100% heat removal, allowing customers to run 100kW+ server racks without specialised air conditioning. 

The improved efficiency and simplification of the new Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling enables supercomputing for organisations of all sizes with scalable solutions and services.

As Chief Security and AI Officer, how do you lead with Lenovo’s Responsible AI Committee on governance?

My appointment as Chief Security and AI Officer last year was timed with the introduction of Lenovo’s new global AI policy that set out clear guidance, policies and procedures around the ethical and responsible use of AI. 

‘Oversight & Governance’ is one of three core policy pillars guiding my team’s work to ensure algorithmic fairness, regulatory compliance, and a strong data infrastructure for responsible AI deployment. 

Good governance is not just setting your own course but also building broader coalitions with industry partners. 

Lenovo is working with NGOs such as the World Economic Forum’s AI Governance Alliance to promote its principles, as well as committing to the Canadian Government’s Voluntary Commitment to Responsible, Ethical Generative AI and UNESCO’s Commitment to and Recommendation on the Ethics of AI. 

These resolutions are not only ethical, but practical - by voluntarily subjecting our products to stricter scrutiny now, Lenovo hopes to conform to the emerging patchwork of global regulations, led by the European Union’s AI Act.

How do you enforce the six pillars of Responsible AI at Lenovo?

At Lenovo, our pillars aren’t just a set of principles but part of our everyday work. 

This often starts with a simple question: who’s using this and how? 

This helps us to design, build and deploy AI in every aspect of its product lifecycle.

We’ve had a privacy mandate in place since 2007, and that foundation shapes how we approach AI. 

We ensure that any data we collect is minimal, purposeful and legitimate, which can be challenging at times but non-negotiable, especially as the AI landscape continues to rapidly evolve.

We also know that AI can reflect and amplify bias if we’re not careful, so we place an emphasis on retraining our AI models with more diverse datasets and regularly re-evaluate our models to consider real-world impact.

To maintain accountability, we document the development of our AI systems and subject them to rigorous testing to ensure they perform reliably, rather than simply adopting the latest technology. 

These examples, along with similar principles to build transparent and explainable systems, enable our customers to understand how decisions are made and help them feel confident in their interactions with our tools.